


Nothing easy worth doing

by elareine



Category: Power Rangers (2017)
Genre: Canon Autistic Character, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Friendship, Gen, Mild Language, being an autistic superhero isn't always easy, but there are advantages to it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-02
Updated: 2018-01-02
Packaged: 2019-02-27 06:54:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13242876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elareine/pseuds/elareine
Summary: Ten snippets of Billy's life as a Power Ranger. There's two sides to every coin.





	Nothing easy worth doing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Random_fan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Random_fan/gifts).



> Dear Random_fan, I hope you enjoy your "long shot paying" off.
> 
> Beta by prettylittlepliers, who's a champion. Thank you so much. Magoril audienced this, for which I'm also thankful.
> 
> Additional warning: There's one case of rather violent imagery in snippet 9 (paragraph 5), if you want to skip that. Language only refers to the f-word, I didn't use any slurs. 
> 
> Obligatory mention that I'm autistic myself, but obviously Billy's and my experiences aren't the same and it's absolutely fine to tell me if something is off.

 

1\. When Billy asked: “Trini, Zack, you’ll pair up for this, right?” he wasn’t expecting any problems.

But: “I’ll do some katas,” was Trini’s immediate answer. “I don’t feel like doing any pair work, especially not with him.”  

“Fine,” Zack spat, “I’ll work with Jason instead.”

“Fine.” Trini turned and walked away.

Zack turned towards the opposite direction, gesturing at Jason: “Coming?” 

“Sure,” Jason sighed, but went with him. 

Kimberley gently motioned Billy aside. “Zack and Trini are fighting. Have been, all day.” 

Billy blinked. “Why? They usually get along so well. Like, once Zack stopped hitting on her because he realized she’s a lesbian.” 

Kimberley laughed, though Billy wasn’t entirely sure why. 

“What?”

“Nothing,” she shook her head. “I’m sure they’ll be fine. Just leave them to deal with it, yeah?” 

Billy didn’t like that. His friends should get along. Then again, he’d grown used to not always knowing what was happening socially. To be honest, it didn’t always interest him all that much, either. He just didn’t want them to be unhappy. 

Nothing he could do about this, though. 

“Okay.”

 

2\. “Was that too direct?” Billy once asked Jason when they were in the car. “My mom told me not to call people out in front of everyone, but I always forget.” Instead, he’d called Jason selfish for caring more about his reputation than the people they were trying to save here. In front of the team and Zordon. Oops.

“Nah. I think it’s great.” 

It was so surprising that Billy looked at him, tried to read something in the vague lines of his face. 

Early on, when he’d just met his friends, he’d always forced himself to at least pretend he could hold eye contact. Allistics never noticed you were basically just staring at the root of their nose. Now, he didn’t even need to do that anymore. Jason and the others didn’t seem to care. 

“What is?” 

“You being honest,” Jason shrugged and turned away a bit, concentrating on the road (like he should, honestly). “Like. My dad is often angry with me, but I can never be sure it’s actually for the reason he gives me.”

“That makes no sense.” 

“Not really. I dunno. Lots of people don’t tell you what exactly you fucked up, or they swallow it down and then explode when something small or entirely different happens. It’s fucking annoying, is what it is, so…” he spread his hands and smiled. “I appreciate you calling me out when I’m an asshole, is what I’m saying.” 

“Anytime.” 

They laughed.

 

3\. Billy knew by the time Maths started that this was going to be a bad day.

Most days, he could handle school. Sure, his social life hadn’t been so great before he’d found the Power Coin, but noise level and other sensory input usually hovered around the line of ‘not great, but fine’. 

Today, even his earbuds didn’t shield him from the background noise as they should. He could barely focus on what the teacher was saying. And the smell… the smell... 

Once, in desperation, Billy had sprayed his mom’s perfume on his sleeve, taking a deep sniff whenever everything else got too much. It wasn’t a great solution, but he still wished he’d have thought of it this morning.

So of course this was the day an oversized, not to mention distinctly un-extinct pachycephalosaurus decided to attack their town. There was screeching, and panic, and Jason yelling at the Rangers to assemble and - Billy couldn’t. 

He just couldn’t. 

All he could do was press his hands to his ears, shut his eyes, and cry. 

In the end, Zack guided him to a dark room, and the other rangers managed to subdue the beast without him. 

 

4\. So most of the time it was really annoying not being able to tune out voices. It meant overhearing conversations he wasn’t the least bit interested in, getting annoyed at the pitch of certain voices or even being unable to process what the person talking to him was saying because there was just  _ so much noise _ .

Sometimes, though… 

“I think I’ve seen a ghost,” Trini said, her face white. “Rita. In my bedroom. She was all faded - but she was there.” 

They all processed that.

“Are you sure?” Kimberley asked tentatively. “I mean. That  _ was _ a pretty traumatizing event and no one would blame you if-”

“Nah, it’s probably real,” Billy said. 

Everyone turned to him, surprised. 

“People have been talking about it for days at the cafe now,” he explained. “Like. Seeing their dead parent, or grandfather, or whoever else. Nothing bad happened, but…” 

“It’s weird,” Zack agreed, “and we should probably investigate it before Rita makes a surprise comeback in Trini’s bedroom.” 

Trini’s face scrunched up. “Yeah, let’s avoid that. Who did you hear talking about it, Billy? We can start by asking them, compare some notes.” 

 

5\. “It was so cool being able to see such a huge bumblebee. Did you know that the whole idea of the bumblebee defying physics came from the French entomologist August Magnan in the 1930s? He was wrong, though. They did a study in 2005, using both photography and actual robot wings. Man, those scientists would have loved to have the specimen we fought today. But what they found out is that the fluid dynamics are different from a plane - more like a helicopter and a small hurricane-”

“Billy!” Jason interrupted him, impatient and about to be late for class. “Not right now, okay?”

Billy sighed. “Okay.” 

 

6\. “What the fuck is that.” Zack asked flatly.

“I think - I think it’s the Chupacabra!” Billy was  _ so excited about this _ . 

“The what?” 

“The Chupacabra! A legendary monster of North and South America, though its origin is likely in Puerto Rico. I read so many stories of it as a child! The name means ‘goat sucker’. It’s usually blamed for livestock deaths, not necessarily human ones. Its bite is venomous and it sucks blood out of its prey. Other powers include healing, super strength and hypnosis - careful of the eyes! All carcasses found so far have been coyotes with really bad gangrene, though. I’ve never seen convincing evidence that they are real. Or bigger than a bear.”

“Well, looks like some fucker made their very own one, then,” Zack observed the building-high creature with some disgust. 

“Bet they didn’t count on Billy here identifying it right away,” Trini grinned. “How can they be defeated?” 

“Sunlight, being shot, being set on fire,” Billy counted out on his fingers, “possibly acid venom bites, but that’s a rumour.”

“Sounds doable. Let’s go!” 

 

8\. Being a superhero didn’t lend itself very well to keeping a routine. Billy knew that.

Sadly, his mom didn’t, so he didn’t blame her when she yelled after him: “Billy? Are you okay? Why are you leaving so early?” 

His routine was fixed, after all. Washing his face first. (Cold water, always. Warm water was icky.) Then breakfast: toast, two eggs, butter, jam, orange juice. Deodorant, if tolerable. Getting dressed. Brushing his teeth and hair. That usually left him with eleven minutes to gather everything he needed for the school day and put it into his backpack in order of importance before one of his friends came to pick him up. Putting on the left shoe first, then the right, then, if the weather needed it, a jacket. Kissing his mom goodbye on the right cheek. 

“Photography club emergency meeting!” he called back. Trini and Zack had started assigning them lies. That way, at least their statements would be consistent. 

There was a sorceress in town, and Billy had no time for breakfast, or brushing his teeth, or packing everything in the right order. 

“It’s okay,” he imagined his father telling him. “You’re okay. Tomorrow it will be all as normal. Just a glitch in the matrix.”

Still, Billy was unsettled for the rest of the day. 

 

9\. Once a week, the Power Rangers came together and had a barbecue next to the open fire.

The barbecue part had been, unsurprisingly, Jason’s idea when he got sick of persisting on marshmallows and sausages. In his family, barbecuing was basically passed down from generation to generation, and for once, Jason didn’t seem to mind walking in his father’s footsteps, just ‘borrowed’ his father’s travelling grill once a week.  

So now Billy prepared vegetable shashlik while Trini build the fire, Jason got the grill going and Kimberley pounded the meat. Zack would join them soon - he needed to have dinner with his mother, first, so he usually came about half an hour later. Billy didn’t mind. It had became part of the routine. Also, Zack always brought the best salads. 

Billy was brought out of his thoughts by a loud yelp. He went into fight stance immediately, saw Trini and Kimberly do the same out of the corner of his eye. 

But it was only Jason, surprised by the strength of the new fire starter he’d wanted to try. He stumbled back a bit, nursing his singed thumb, then looked up and asked: “What the fuck are you doing?” 

For a moment, there was silence. Billy looked down. He was extending the shashlik like a weapon. Kimberly was clutching the meat hammer and Trini held a piece of burning wood in her hands, ready to throw it. They looked terrifying. 

Kimberly was the first to giggle, and soon, the others joined in, clutching their sides as they couldn’t seem to stop.

Billy thought that the other four would probably not have made this into a habit if he hadn’t called them, back in the beginning, and asked why they weren’t there, he thought this was a thing. Looking at their laughter, he was pretty proud of himself.  

 

9\. The new uniform was driving him out of his mind.

Okay, the modifications were pretty cool. Breathing underwater? Absolutely appreciated, though it would have been more useful to get this  _ before _ they had to fight a guy who controlled waves. (And the sharks within it.) 

But still: “I can’t wear this.” 

“Why?” Zorgon asked. “It will help you greatly in your fights. I will not have Alpha 5’s work go to waste because of your delicate sensibilities.” 

That stung. Not enough to overcome the way the fabric itched, though, rubbing his nerves raw, making him want to claw his skin off. 

“I can’t. I’m autistic,” Billy explained, as he had before, but sometimes, people didn’t get it the first few times, “and this is bad fabric. I  _ can’t. _ ” 

“Surely there’s another fabric we can use for this,” Jason said. “The one before that was fine, right?” 

“Yeah. I got a list - my mom made it when I was younger, but it obviously doesn’t contain alien fabrics, so I don’t know-” 

Zorgon sighed. “We’ll find something.”

 

10\. “I looked it up,” Kimberly explained, “it’s called a stim toy, right? And none of your usual ones fit into our suits, so I thought…”

He smiled widely at her. “Thank you, this is great!” 

Still, the first time they went into a fight after that, he almost forgot about it. It was noisy, and everyone was a little bit panicky, because  _ shit, _ this thing was  _ big _ and it didn’t seem to care about civilian casualties  _ at all _ and their weapons weren’t working, not yet. 

But Billy’s hands always made their way into his pockets if they could, a habit acquired from many, many comments about his weird gesticulation, and it brushed against Kimberley’s cushing. Almost without thinking, he brushed the little paillettes into one direction, then the other. 

Back and forth. It was grounding. Soothing. Helped him to think. 

And then, Billy had an idea: “It’s keeping its tail away from us! Maybe that’s more vulnerable - it needs it to balance!”

“Formation three!” Trini yelled. “Surround it!” 

And it worked. With whooping and laughing, they finally,  _ finally _ managed to get that thing off its legs. 

“Good thinking, Billy!” Jason yelled through the comms. 

Billy grinned and brushed his fingers over the paillettes again. It had been. 


End file.
